[4.] And when we go to Christ for the Spirit, as we must beg it if we will have it, — God will give the Holy Ghost to them that ask him, Luke xi. 13, — remember that ice use the means carefully; reading, and hearing, and holy communion of saints, because though these without the Spirit can do nothing, jet the Spirit is not given but by these. These are the golden conduits of the Spirit of Christ. No man is ever spiritual but they are readers, and hearers, and conferrers of good things, and attenders upon the means of salvation, because God will work by his own tools and instru- ments. Therefore it is said, Kev. i. 9, that John was ' full of the Spirit upon the Lord's day.' Let a Christian sanctify the Sabbath as he should do, he will be in the Spirit on the Lord's day more than on other days. Why ? Because then he is reading, and hearing, and conferring, and in some spiritual course ; and the more a man on the Lord's day
216 EXCELLENCY OF THE GOSPEL
is in a spiritual course, the more he is in tlie Spirit : ' John was in the Spirit on the Lord's day.' So much for these words, ' The Lord is that Spirit,'
* And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is hberty.'
We see here what the Spirit works where it is. ' Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is hberty.' I will name the instance that I gave before, that I may the better go on. We say the sun is heat and influence ; not that it is so, for they be accidents, but the sun appears to us for our comfort in heat and influence, therefore we call it by that name. AVe say of a man, he is all spirit. So Christ is all Spirit. The sun is all light, and where the light and heat of the sun is there is fruitfulness. So Christ is all Spirit, and where the Spirit of Christ is there is spiritual liberty.
It were expense of time to no purpose to tell you of the divers kinds of liberty. In a word, liberty is that that all desire, but our miscarriage is in the means of it, the way to attain to it. Here we see whence to have it, from the Spirit of Christ. Liberty is a sweet thing, especially liberty from the greatest enemies of all. If outward liberty be such a sweet thing — liberty from tyranny and base servitude, it is a thing that man's nature delights in ; and the contrary, man as a man abhors ; and he hath not the nature of a man that doth not abhor it, — what shall we think then of the liberty of the Spirit from the great enemies that daunt the greatest monarchs in the world ? Liberty from the anger of the great God ; and liberty from Satan, God's executioner ; liberty from the terror of com- science, from the fear of death, and hell, and judgment ; what shall we think of liberty in these respects ? Therefore we speak of great matters here below when we speak of liberty.
Now liberty is either Christian or evangelical, i You may think this a nice difference, but there is some reality in it.
(1.) Christian liberty is that that belongs to all, even to those before Christ. Though they have not the term of Christians, yet they were mem- bers of Christ. Christ was head of the church ' yesterday, and to-day, and for ever,' Heb. xiii. 8.
(2.) Evangelical liberty is that that is more appropriated to the times of the gospel since the coming of Christ. Now the liberty that belongs to Christians as Christians, is perpetual from those grand enemies, the greatest enemies of all, spiritual and inward liberty. In evangelical liberty, besides that, there is another outward liberty, from the ceremonial and moral law and such like ; and a liberty from the restraint of the law. The Jews were under many restraints, that under the gospel in this time we are not. I speak therefore of liberty as it runs through all ages of the church, not of evangelical merely since the time of Christ. Where the Spirit is, both these liberties are now since the coming of Christ. Now in that the Holy Ghost saith here, ' Where the Spirit of Christ is there is liberty,' it supposeth that ive are in bondage before ice have the Spirit of Christ.
That is a supposed ground and truth, and indeed so it is. For out of Christ we are slaves, the best of us all are slaves. In Christ the meanest of all is a free man, and a king. Out of Christ there is nothing but thral- dom. We are under the kingdom of the devil. When he calls us we come. We are in thraldom under the wrath of God, under the fear of death and damnation, and all those spiritual enemies that I need not mention. They are well enough known to you by often repetition. There is no man but
ABOVE THE LAW. 217
he is a slave till ho be in Christ ; and the more free a man thinks himself to be, and labours to be, the more slave he is. For take a man that labours to have his liberty, to do what he list,* he thinks it the happiest condition in the world ; and others think it the best condition to have hberty not to be tyrannised over by others. It is the disposition of man's nature without grace. They account it a happiness to have their wills over all other, but the more liberty in this, the more slavery. Why ?